'Tokyo Vice' Review: A Gripping Series That Lives in the Moments Between Acts of Violence

HBO Max has struck gold with this addictive series featuring an ensemble cast and a brilliant narrative.

Apr 05 (collider.com) - Noir fiction has been having something of a resurgence lately, with movies like The Batman exploring the subgenre in new ways. HBO Max’s brand-new yakuza crime drama Tokyo Vice extends that to serialized fiction.

Created by J.T. Rogers (Oslo) and based on the 2009 memoir Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein, the show’s premise is simple enough. Ansel Elgort stars as a fictionalized version of Adelstein, and the series explores how he makes his way as the first non-Japanese reporter to work for a major publication in Tokyo.

Based on just that information, you’d probably expect an emotional drama about a young man finding himself in a strange land. Which it is. There’s no denying the fact that this is a story about an ex-pat trying to make a life for himself away from everything he’s ever known. But that’s not all it’s about, and that brings us to the first lesson of Tokyo Vice: nothing is ever as it seems.

It all starts with one bad day in Shinjuku when a man is found stabbed to death. As Jake digs deeper, he begins to see past the strait-laced days and neon-drenched nights to the true face of Tokyo’s underworld. ...continue reading

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